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Jersey City Salutes Police Officer Melvin Santiago

Rookie Jersey City Police Office Melvin Santiago was assassinated on Sunday responding to a call at a local Walgreens.  Yesterday, over a 1,000 people lined up outside a funeral home to salute an officer who gave his life in service to a city in the hard, urban core.  Officer Santiago was 23 and — during his wake — was promoted to the rank of Detective and given the Medal of Honor in death by the Mayor of Jersey City.

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Winning the Gun Game by Outgunning the Gunners

We have a gun problem in the USA — and our children are paying the price for our metal obsession with their lives and futures.  In the first days of September 2013, the headlines screamed with blood and unnecessary pain.

I don’t even need to argue the bullet points that guns are a menace in the public square.  The news of the day provides simple enough, and predictable enough, facts of what happened.

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The Liberator: Using 3D Printers to Kill

If you had access to a 3D printer and could create only one thing out of plastic, from scratch, what would you make?  An implantable human ear replacement?  A filter for pumping clean water in thirsty third-world nations?  What about forming something fun and whimsical like, say, an acoustic guitar?  Or, would you take the tunnel of least resistance, and the road of the lowest common human morality, and choose to print a plastic gun for killing people?

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Rihanna Gets a Gun and Shoots Herself in the Breast

We have been big supporters of Rihanna — but the tastelessness of her new “Man Down” video where she assassinates a man before the song even begins — is just too much tacky for our type.  We are also plainly aware that the core mistakes of the Man Down video are identical to the errors made in the video for “Love the Way You Lie.” We see a pattern here and we don’t like the mosaic.

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The Loaded Gun to Cuba and the TSA

For the last eight years, we have been subject to ever increasing scrutiny by airport security when traveling by air. From taking off our shoes to measuring out exact measures of shampoo, going from point A to point B by air has slowly turned into an exercise in greater and greater public humiliation at the hands of the TSA.

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Invoking the Cross and the Gun

We rely on stereotypes a bit too much in the theatre to provide a crafted, but logistical, shorthand for wringing out the emotion from our audiences.  How easy is it to invoke the Angel and the Badge to provoke push-button reactions?  We must always be wary before invoking the Cross and the Gun.

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Learning How to Properly Applaud

One of the first thing I teach my theatre students is how to properly applaud.  I don’t mean when to applaud during a live performance — I mean I teach them how to bring their hands together to make a proper and appropriate sound.  Righteous applause should should have the tart sound of exploding gun powder and the retort of a shotgun.

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